Souls Divided [Souls Series 1]

Chapter 6

She turned, slightly surprised, but not really and this was actually the conversation she had been anticipating. She really wasn't trying to be confrontational. Not yet, anyway — she let him finish first. Call it morbid curiosity.

Something in his tone had gone careful again, the good humor that could be felt on the field a second ago was wiped off the board entirely. "A kitsune's strength doesn't hold the same way against that of a wolf. Raw power, full weight behind it — that's a different animal. Literally." A beat, and then, sharper: "I am curious to see how you fight against that. We don't need someone in the field with us, we need to worry about protecting.”

She asked, “Do you think my grandmother needs protection in the field, or my sister did?"

Something flickered across his face — not quite guilt, but close enough to its neighborhood that she caught it. "That came out wrong. Or it landed wrong, at least." He exhaled once through his nose. "I'm not doubting whether you can hold your own. I have watched you do that twice already today." A beat, and something almost curious crept into his voice, replacing the edge from before. "But I need to know how you fight, so I know what I’m dealing with during a mission, how to work with it."

She studied him a beat longer than she needed to, recalibrating. "Could've led with that."

"Could have. Didn't." The ghost of something almost like a smile, gone before it fully arrived.

“So the big Alpha secretly has a thing for rattling his opponents’ cages, huh?” She said playfully, testing how far she could go, “You like to be in control? Perhaps a little fetish? Like it when everybody else is on their toes? Fair warning: I don’t get rattled easily, I give back just as hard… as I get.”

Yes, the innuendo was there on purpose, and yes, she heard Malik behind her almost choke trying to hold his laugh.

Something crossed his face — he was probably noticing he lost control of the conversation, yet again, and trying to calculate how to get it back. He didn't take the bait, not directly, but he didn't fully dodge it either.

"Careful," he said, voice even, though something underneath it had gone slightly less even than a second ago. "You play a daring game with insubordination.”

"Just trying to gather intel about my new team." She shrugged, all false innocence. "Isn't that the whole point of today?"

Behind her, Malik made a sound that was definitely not a cough, and definitely was trying very hard to be one.

Rohan's jaw did the thing it did — that small, contained tick that she was starting to recognize as his version of losing composure. "Strip and shift," he said instead of answering, which she took, correctly, as a full and complete surrender of that particular exchange.

She couldn’t avoid it any longer. The thing she'd been circling around for the last five minutes without quite admitting it to herself — every jab, every deflection, every ridiculous half-flirted insult had bought her another thirty seconds where she was still just the specialist who'd beaten Malik, not the one about to become something else in his eyes.

She wasn't proud of it, exactly. But she also wasn't above buying herself a little more time before she watched that particular recalculation happen on everybody’s face. Although she assumed Freya may already know.

Out of time now, though.

"Can't do that."

He took a confrontational step towards her. "Excuse me?"

"No beast, which means no shifted form and no ‘furry’ for you to judge and assess, Alpha." She let the title sit a beat too long — enough edge for the whole yard to catch it, not quite enough to be called outright disrespect. It implied that she thought he should know that already, it implied that she didn’t think she should defend herself about it. She was qualified, even without it.

The quiet across the training ground changed texture. Curious and judging now, not polite.

"No beast." His voice had gone flat; he was doing math he didn't like the shape of. "How does a beast-less end up on the most selective unit in the realm without a single line about it in her file?"

"Maybe you just didn’t look good enough; there is no picture in my file of a beast and no name stated for it. You just assumed that, because that judgmental classification is not written down in red letters that I am what you call ‘normal’.” She spread her hands, mock-innocent. "Something against the beast-less specifically, Alpha, or is today just my lucky day?"

A low whistle rippled through the small crowd — she'd just accused the leader of the most exclusive unit in the realm of prejudice, in front of that same unit, purely to watch him scramble. Dangerous game. Fun one, though.

"That is not…" He caught himself, visibly recalculating, torn between defending his team's name and figuring out exactly what she was. "How are you even alive doing this job without a beast?"

"Don't need one to do it well and, from the looks of your Beta, I think she knows why." Anya rolled a shoulder, unbothered, and could see Rohan quickly look at Freya. Freya looked at Rohan unmoved, no guilt at all, she definitely had done her job and researched Anya properly.

“Do you even know how much variation there is amongst us the non-shifters and beast-less? Do you know what we are capable of?” Anya asked.

"I'd still put money on beating your furry friend, actually. Just — not the way you're expecting. The loser pays for the first round of drinks, the good kind."

He studied her for a long moment, something shifting behind his eyes that wasn't quite skepticism anymore — closer to someone verging on the edge and not enjoying how often he had been on that edge already today, because of her challenging him and making him lose control of the situation.

Vane stepped towards Rohan, clearly aware of his emotions and wanting to defuse the situation, but he wasn’t quick enough.

Rohan stepped into the circle, "Fine." He said, fully ticked off. "Show me, then."

He stripped off his shirt with the efficient lack of ceremony of someone who'd done it a thousand times and shifted — it felt like watching something get unleashed rather than transformed. The wolf that stood where Rohan had been a heartbeat ago was massive, dark-coated, and when it turned its head toward her, its eyes weren't pale green anymore; they were black.

Fully, unnervingly black, like there was no end to them.

But she didn't have time to wonder about that. He came at her immediately, no testing jab first, none of Malik's professional courtesy — just full weight and speed, exactly the kind of raw, uncomplicated force she'd baited him into proving.